Bulldog Keyless Entry installation

I finished doing this a few minutes ago. A couple of things though, I have never done anything electrical so feel free to point and laugh of any mistakes or silly things I did. I haven't had a chance to test the unit yet because I am waiting for my new door lock actuators to come in the mail any day now.
Sorry for the crappy quality of the pics, hurts me looking at them! Next project is to get a new camera!!

The unit I decided to purchase was from all the suggestions I read here on FSB and also cause I thought this is the nicest looking set. This is model number KE1702. They sell lots of different once and the prices were good. I got mine from ebay for $19 which is swwwwweeeet! I think they sell for about $40-50 otherwise. So what's in the box you ask? One wire harness, two keyless remotes, one reciever unit and one relay (used for shutting off power to ignition). The remotes have batteries in them.


This one just showing the two panels that need to come out. The top one (the one with the fuse box cover) only has two bolts (7mm) and the bottom one (kick panel) comes out once you remove the step plate and loosen the screw for the panel directly above this panel (Don't mean to make it sound complicated, really simple once you see it!).


This is what it'll look like with those two panels off. The loose wire you see towards the bottom left of the screen I think is going to the back to the subwoofer (ahhh yeah!)


This is a good picutre (well it's a shi++y picture but conceptually it's a good picture) because it shows all the wires running under the steering column. Lot's of crimps everywhere, I think the last dude who had this bronco did all that when he installed his sound system.


This pic is upside down. But it basically shows where the wires go from underneath the steering wheel. I don't know what the blue thing is on the left. But that rusty thing dead center comes from the steering shaft.


This is part of the bulldog system. This is the wire harness you are looking at. The plastic end you see plugs into the receiver that you'll see in a later pic. The little black thing is the fuse. The other end of the wires are all precut really neatly which I thought was a sweet touch on Bulldog's part.


I just took a pic of this sheet I downloaded from Bulldog's website. It basically lists the color wires and their location for my year bronco. This diagram is for 1992-1994 I think and I have a 1994.


I just wanted more room so I took the seat out. Pretty staright forward. Reach under and unplug the cable which is for the little seat inflation and then just unbolt the 4 bolts which I believe where 15mm. Use deep socket for the rear though. You can also see in this pic the voltmeter, the two keyless remotes, the relay (which I won't use cause I'm not worried about getting my truck stolen. My neighbor has a 1994 viper, a white porshe, a gorgeous 1996 impala, a CL mercedes and some other car that's old but I have no idea what it is). That black thing is the receiver and that other smaller black thing is my pager (in case my work find out that I'm actually having a good time working on my truck). The two wires you see are for the stereo system.


OK, I have never used a voltmeter before and don't laugh but I had to go test it on the car battery to figure out which lead goes where and what to select. Trust me, that took some time! :doh0715: My right hand is holding the positive lead which is touching the power wire and the black lead is touching something metallic on the body. Let me add something here, when I first took cover off the bottom of the steering wheel and looked at all the wires I almost took a crap in my pants! And here is something that you guys can make fun of for a long time: the instructions said to touch all the different wires until the voltmeter read 12 volts. And so I did . . . touched almost 8,000 wires and nothing showed up of course . . . can you guess why? well, first I guess I needed to ground the other lead and also apparently electricity doesn't penetrate through the plastic covering it so well . . . :doh0715: It's not that I'm stupid :toothless it's just that I wasn't thinking cause I was so shit-struck by all the wires.


So I had no idea what this plastic thing was until I took it apart. In the last picture you can see me probing it alien style and it happened to have some juice which means that's the power cable I was looking for. Apparently this thinga-magic splices into the power wire (which is yellow by the way) and has room for another smaller gauge cable to plug into it. So that's exactly what I did. The red cable you see is the first of the wires that you need to connect off of the harness. The way you see it is the way it was made by bulldog, isn't it cool? So I just stuck it into the back of this little brown thing (the metal thing you see goes in first) and the whole thing snaps around the power wire. Hey, it worked even if I wasn't supposed to do it . . . anyone have any thoughts on this?


Here is a better picture. I know there are two in the picture but I was using the lower one (you're looking at the two brown things). The red cable coming out is the power cable off the harness. The yellow wire is the constant 12V wire off the bronco. I have NO clue what all the other wires are all around.


Next is the black wire which is our ground. I just found something metallic and made sure there was no paint or smudge and just bolted the screw on top of it.


I unbolted the hood latch lever for better access. 2 bolts that were I think 6mm, I forget.


Here is a good picture. You're looking at the left kick panel space. The wires running parallel to your view are from the bulldog harness. The wires running up and down were wrapped in electrical tape and I just unwrapped a little to gain access. There might be a bunch of other stuff in the pictures you see that I may not mention cause they are self explanatory but please feel free to ask and I'll explain.

Using that sheet of paper from bulldog's website then this pink wire with the green stripe should be POWER UNLOCK wire. I didn't test these wires after cutting them which I am willing to GUARANTEE will come and bite me in the butt.


This next wire is the POWER LOCK wire which is pink/yellow. Cut down the middle and beginning stripping . . . the wires please, keep your clothes on!


Here is a closeup of that table you saw earlier in another picture.


This is the receiver box and this diagram just shows what is what. You need relays for all the other stuff like trunk release, starter kill, parking lights etc... which you can order from their website for like $10 each.


So this pic shows how the connections to the harness should be if you have a type C (reverse polarity) lock mechanism. The instructions take you through how to test and see what kind of system you have. Type C I guess is how most fords are wired.


Back to cutting the wires. Here I have cut the pink/green wire in half already. The instructions said not to use crimps and instead to wrap the 2 wires that you wanna connect around each other and tape them and use zip ties. So I did that for the brown-to-pink connection and realized that it was too time consuming and so used crimps for the other ones from then on (like the red one you see).


So here you see the connections I've already made. Basically I followed the instructions: cut the unlock wire in half and attach the brown wire from the harness to one end and blue to the other. Then cut the lock wire and attach the green wire from the harness to one end and the white to the other. That little piece of black plastic you see is just so that I don't mess up the other wires as I'm cutting away the top ones.


The instructions asked for another wires (purple wire with fuse) to also attach to the constant power cable. Which I don't understand, couldn't I have just connected it to the red one which is the first one I attached to the power cable?? Anyway, this time I used the exact method they suggested to splice into the power wire. Here you see me taking a little pice of the plastic off the wire (I used a scalpel that I snatched from the hospital).


Here I inserted something pointy through the wire to open up a little space to put the purple wire from the harness through.


And this is it, I wrapped the bare wires around each other a few times and then electrical tape over it and zip tie.


There it is! All pretty and stuff . . . can you see the zip tie? I haven't cut the excess part off yet. Just want to remind you that I still don't have the big picture as to what I'm doing . . . just following instructions . . . so many wires!! makes me dizzy . . .


I took it apart just to see what's in it . . . just as I suspected, nothing I can make any sense of! The little red thing you see on the circuit board is a screw that can be tightened or loosened . . . what's it for?


So here I cut the extra wires off the harness that I knew I wouldn't be using (the harness head is sitting on the left side of the picture, I know the quality sucks). I've also started wrapping all the wires that run together in insulating tape.


This is supposed to show the wires after all of them are wrapped and I ran them down the same route that all the other wires were run by the factory with zip ties. You can see here that I wrapped the two 12V power wires together as well.


I peeled back the insulation (or heat shield or whatever) to find a place to mount the receiver. Remember, find a space so that you won't kick it, it won't interfere with the gas or break or clutch, and so that you'll have enough room for the harness to reach it. You can see that for the amp there is a power wire running in already (red) . . . oh crap, I could have used that instead of looking so long for a power wire!!


Voila! See the box installed in the back? I just put holes through the insulation pad and zip tied the receiver down . . . and the harness is plugged in as you can see . . . the wires from the kick panel are running under the carpet . . . easy fit actually! The yellow wire dangling is the antenna . . . we'll find a spot for that soon . . . probably gonna zip tie that too!


Instructions say the antenna wire has to be as straight as possible. So I pulled it up straight and found a place to anchor it with a zip tie as you can see. Well, you can't see the zip tie actually.


Here is what the car looked like after I finished, not too dirty! And the next picture is all the tools, but didn't need most of them.